Month: May 2011

ASUS can’t wait for Computex to start, and announced the PadFone beforehand, alongside other products like the UX Series and the MeMO 3D.

First thing I thought of when I saw this was ‘Motorola Atrix’. Why? Because the Atrix shares the similar concept of ‘phone in dock’:

Of course, there are fundamental differences between the two: The PadFone’s ‘tablet dock’ (or whatever it’s called) is a tablet that essentially acts an an external monitor, while the Atrix’s laptop dock runs on the Webtop OS (Linux-based) and interacts with the phone through alternative means.

I personally think that the PadFone concept is really cool; I’ve always been complaining about the small screen size (yes, even 4.3-inch doesn’t satisfy me) of smartphones being usable as entertainment devices; and the problem is as phones they can’t really to be too big anyway (5-inch Dell Streak is probably the most it can go). Having used an iPad for a few months, I have to give it to Apple for starting the tablet revolution and for convincing me that big screens in a carry-able package is the way to go for portable entertainment.

Thus, that’s where the PadFone’s ‘Pad’ comes in – essentially it ‘upgrades’ your phone’s screen to a big, nice one while retaining all data and settings. Say I have a video on my phone that I want to share it on the big screen to my friend. Were the ‘Pad’ and the ‘Fone’ two different pieces of equipment, I would have to send the video over to the Pad from the Fone. But with this setup ASUS provides, it’s just a matter of inserting the Fone into the docking bay and you can enjoy right away. And better speakers + battery life, who doesn’t want that?

One problem (and a huge hassle) that I face with owning multiple media devices is that there is just no good way of syncing data seamlessly between them, and so having say an iPhone and an iPad isn’t probably the best solution. I believe the PadFone is potentially a very good solution to that problem.

I’m looking forward to it, though I think I will most probably not wait and get myself an Xperia Play or the Galaxy S II. 😀

Okay, maybe it’s the D150, but I seriously don’t know the model number of my dad’s Aspire One. (Heck, I even went googling ‘how to check acer aspire one model number’!)

Clinging onto my small hope of playing Minecraft at home in Malaysia, I borrowed my dad’s Aspire One to replace my forever-underpowered VAIO P as my workstation of the week. And boy, not only did it handle Minecraft reasonably well (low fps due to mediocre netbook CPU), I could play a 720p video smoothly with Minecraft minimized and a few chrome tabs (Facebook, Twitter..) open, on an external monitor. And that’s with 1GB of ram, not even two.

Now I see some potential in the combination of the Atom N270 processor with Windows XP. Time to downgrade my VAIO P to Windows XP..

In other news, The Voice Episode 3 (the 720p video I watched, lol) was awesome, especially the last duet – Perfect by Niki and Vicci. Check it out!

This is the first Fast and Furious series film I’ve watched, and it made me realise just how much I’ve missed by not watching them. The movie is simply awesome; the characters have convincing acting, the drifting and action scenes are really well done (especially the climax part – go watch it!), and the girls are sizzling hot. The Rock stars as a supporting cast in the show and I think he adds some degree of fierceness to the movie. 🙂

The only thing I thought the scriptwriter could’ve done better is to actually give a satisfactory closure to Vince’s child, and to actually give a bit more screentime to Vince, given him being a close friend of Dom (as far as I understand from the movie).

Rating: 9/10

b. Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides

On the other hand, I’ve watched all previous films of this series, including the third last week before I watched this. It was on overall an enjoyable film; some may be disappointed at the absence of the main casts of the previous films (Orlando Broom, Keira Knightley), but Johnny Depp’s acting was still superb, and I definitely would say that he’s the guy that brought the whole show together.

The movie is still funny all around, and there are hot stars to complement (Penelope Cruz, Astrid Berges-Frisbey – mermaid!!), just that there’s a slight lack of the whole ‘Pirates’ feel, as there are not much sea scenes (or rather, lack of ‘epic sea battle’ like the third film).

I guess I’m content with what I have and I don’t ask for more, but I always wonder what’s going to happen if I try. And that probably would lead to a journey of new discovery. It’s about everything I do – coding, dancing, even attempting hard questions in past year papers, as I’ve realised.